British Literary Manuscripts Online

The Development of Poetry in Medieval and Renaissance British Literary Manuscripts

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│By Caley Collins, Gale Ambassador at University College London (UCL)│

Unless you study literature, chances are poetry isn’t the first thing you would think to use as a primary source for an essay. However, poetry gives a fantastic first-hand insight into the language, values, and customs that people were concerned with during specific time periods, making it useful for a wide variety of degrees, including History and Politics. Gale’s Medieval and Renaissance collection, which is part of the British Literary Manuscripts Online archive, contains a vast collection of primary sources ranging from a 1066 Old English historical translation to a 1901 collection of medieval letters.

Using these sources, this post will explore the differences and similarities between poetry written over the course of several centuries. I will quote the sources using modern English spellings, but leave the titles as they were originally written out.

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Top 10 Tips for Researching with British Literary Manuscripts Online

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British Literary Manuscripts Online interface

│By Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull, Senior Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│ Researching literary manuscripts is difficult. In the years following their production, primary sources have often been spread across different institutional libraries around the world. This makes accessing them complicated and expensive, particularly for early career researchers and those conscious of the impact that travelling … Read more

Top 10 Tips for Teaching with Primary Sources

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Portrait of the author as a young lecturer teaching eighteenth-century literary culture to students at the Tate through the work of William Hogarth.

│By Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│

Academics know that there is nothing more joyful or frustrating than working with primary sources. Imparting the ability to locate, appreciate, understand, and interrogate primary materials onto students is central to our roles as educators. But achieving this in the classroom isn’t always easy – especially when you’re also trying to teach through a pandemic! Drawing on my own experience of teaching in higher education, this blog post offers ten top tips on how to teach with primary sources.

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Tracing the Legacy of William Blake with British Literary Manuscripts Online

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| By James Carney, Gale Ambassador at King’s College London |

William Blake is widely considered one of Britain’s finest artists of all time. From painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to writers of the Irish Literary Revival, Blake’s influence permeates the artistic tradition. Therefore, it can come as a surprise to many that Blake’s work passed largely unrecognised during his lifetime. It is only posthumously that his legacy as we know it today has developed. This can be extensively explored using Gale’s British Literary Manuscripts Online: c. 1660-1900 archive.

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PhDing in a Pandemic: The Impact of COVID-19 on Research and Teaching

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Observations concerning the Plague

│By Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│

As an archival scholar trying to write a PhD thesis in a pandemic, COVID-19 has had a huge impact on my working life. The closure of archives, museums, and libraries during the lockdowns prevented me and many others from accessing essential primary resources needed for doctoral research. And without physical access to exciting objects, manuscripts, and printed items to help bring texts alive, inspiring undergraduate students whilst teaching them over Microsoft Teams became equally difficult. With COVID cases once again climbing, we are far from being free of the pandemic. But how can we try to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education and research? And what will the long-term impacts of the pandemic be?

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